


flip

by floraltohru



Category: Fruits Basket, Fruits Basket (Anime 2019), Fruits Basket - Takaya Natsuki (Manga)
Genre: Guess What Time It Is It's College Pining Yukeru Time, M/M, Mutual Pining, Phone Calls, Pining, Yearning, Yes this is a period piece thank you, flip phones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-20 20:34:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30010581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floraltohru/pseuds/floraltohru
Summary: as in: mental gymnastics. as in: that strange feeling in his gut. as in: the cell phone kakeru insisted that yuki needed for some reason or anotheror: yuki never calls kakeru first
Relationships: Manabe Kakeru/Sohma Yuki
Comments: 9
Kudos: 49





	flip

Yuki wouldn't have a phone if he wasn't meant to call anyone, and he wouldn't have Kakeru's phone number if Kakeru didn't want Yuki calling him, specifically.

It's an easy sort of rationalization that's played out in Yuki's brain on more broken record loops than he cares to admit, and yet his hand still lingers in the charged space just above the grid of his phone, hovering but never committing to one quick click. 

Before, he had Kakeru's number memorized. Still does, actually - it hasn't slid from his brain, even though on the rare occasions when he beats back his anxiety to dial he only needs to press a single digit. 

Kakeru had texted himself from Yuki's phone - _hey its kakeru :-) -_ but it took Yuki months to add Kakeru to his contacts. Instead, he held it in the folds of his brain like another nickname. Ten digits flashing on his screen, incessant, irreverent, inconsiderate of the waning light that signaled those first few hours of the morning when it nearly overlaps with the night. 

After their exams Kakeru had made Yuki stay up late playing some vibrant, noisy video game from the eighties to blow off steam. After so many hours, bright bursts of color still flashed behind Yuki's eyelids when he tried to sleep.

Remembering Kakeru's phone number was like that. Imprinted. Disruptive. Distracting. Perhaps not altogether unwelcome.

But Kakeru was insistent to an infuriating degree, as always. 

It wasn't enough that Yuki knew his number. It wasn't enough for Yuki to put him in his contact list. 

"What are you doing?" Yuki asked as Kakeru dug through the pockets of Yuki’s schoolbag, single strap gripped protectively as Kakeru flitted around him.

"Where do you keep it?" 

"Keep what?" Kakeru always seemed to find some reason to root through Yuki's things - for want of a pen, a hunger and a hunch that Yuki had a granola bar buried somewhere in there, sheer boredom. It was hard to tell the reason this time. 

"Your phone, duh." Kakeru gave Yuki a look that Yuki had come realize meant  _ keep up _ but in the sense that Kakeru had already had half of the conversation in his own head and would eventually need to fill in the blanks. 

"Why do you need my phone? Yours is right there."

"I always call you."

"What?"

Kakeru huffed dramatically. " _ I _ always call  _ you.  _ You never call me."

"So?"

" _ So _ I'm assuming it's because it's just too taxing to go all the way to your contacts. I'm putting myself on your speed dial."

At Yuki's blank stare, Kakeru let out a groan. "Don't look at me like that. Tell me you know what speed dial is."

"Don't be stupid. Of course I do."

"You don't!" Kakeru clapped a dramatic, incredulous hand to his forehead. "My dear, poor, sheltered Yun-Yun." He attempted a theatrical embrace, but Yuki's hand braced with resistance against his cheek kept him from getting too close. 

"I'm sure I can use context clues," Yuki huffed. 

He guessed which pocket his phone would be in on the second try and passed it to Kakeru without any more undue reluctance. 

He seemed momentarily surprised, but if Yuki tried to keep him from doing something, Kakeru would figure out how to do it anyway and in the most annoying way possible. Better to bite the bullet and give him what he wanted. Skip the middleman. Deal with the consequences, no additional headaches 

"Number one in your phone  _ and _ in your heart," Kakeru announced, flashing the tiny screen in Yuki's face. His name was stark against the white screen, the only person followed by rows of unassigned contacts. 

"Since you call me so much," Yuki says, shutting the phone with a satisfying  _ clack _ , "am I on your speed dial?" 

"Naturally. Except that you're behind Komaki, because she's my number one."

“Naturally,” Yuki rolled his eyes and ignored the twinge in his stomach. Maybe, like Kakeru, he was just ravenous in the way growing boys tend to be. 

A crumby granola bar buried under a crumpled, week-old flier in his bag didn’t seem to help. 

"I moved you up the list," Kakeru announced one day, sprawled out on his living room floor. That seemed to be the headline, the important news of the day.  _ Local man climbs speed-dial ranks. More at eleven.  _

Yuki didn’t comment, reaching across Kakeru - and by extension, the thin sliver of Kakeru’s exposed stomach - to grab another handful of popcorn before they started the next round of their game. 

Kakeru’s breakup with Komaki wasn't approached until later, after a couple cheap beers he had picked up at the corner store, though Yuki had a hunch he knew which one had happened first. 

Maybe a  _ better _ friend would tell Kakeru that all hope was not lost, that he and Komaki could get back together, that this was just a momentary lapse in their love story, a brief break. 

Yuki settled for being just a  _ good _ friend instead. 

Yuki agonizes. 

He plays out the same tired reasoning in his head. The facts of the case. 

Kakeru has his phone number. He has Kakeru’s phone number. He can use Kakeru’s phone number, and visa versa. 

Kakeru is Yuki’s friend. Yuki is Kakeru’s friend. Friends talk. They’re allowed to talk, on the phones whose numbers they have already shared. 

And a third fact of the matter is that Yuki kind of misses Kakeru. Not that he’d say it. Not that he’d even let himself think it, except for the part where he did. Just a little bit. Not enough to put it on the list. 

Yet still, Yuki waits. Pondering. He doesn't really have a good excuse to call Kakeru, not right now, not that it matters; Kakeru seems to find the smallest justification for blowing up Yuki's cell. He saw a dog on his walk, he bombed his calculus exam, he remembered something funny that Nao said during a student council meeting one time and  _ Don't you remember what I said, Yun? He got so red in the face, it was hilarious and - what do you mean you tuned out most of what I said? You're so cruel to me!  _

He nearly drops his phone on the ground when it rings, an obnoxious array of noises that Kakeru picked out specifically for Yuki to hear whenever he called. 

“I need my own special ringtone, Yun! How else will you know it’s me?” 

“You’re in my contacts, so I can see who’s calling before I answer.”

“What if you go blind?” at this Kakeru had widened his eyes and tilted his head, the universal signal for  _ check mate! I got you there, didn’t I? _ and Yuki swatted at his arm and rolled his own eyes, and it felt like they knew the steps to this dance and it felt right. 

“I won’t go blind,” he said, but he let Kakeru take his phone anyway. 

And he tried to ignore the nagging voice in his head that told him that he was always _always_ letting Kakeru get his way, and the softer nagging voice that asked him why he kept doing that.   
  


Usually Yuki has to hold the phone a good two inches away from his ear when Kakeru answers, sing-songing Yuki’s name or forgoing a greeting altogether to jump into a detailed recap of his latest antics. 

But he’s surprised, this time. Caught off guard. He almost has to lean in to hear. 

It's a softer Kakeru that crackles over the speaker, tender and tentative like an exposed nerve, more unsure than Yuki is used to. 

“Hey, Yuki.” 

It does something peculiar to his stomach, somewhere between a shock and a twist. 

Panic rises in his throat when he realizes he’s gone longer than is perhaps socially acceptable without responding. “Hey, Kakeru.” 

“You’re talkative.” 

“Shut up.” 

“What are you doing tonight?” 

“Studying.” Yuki glances down at his desk, this week’s homework and that week’s homework twisting together into a cluttered heap of academic stress and disorganization. He hasn’t touched it in hours, but his book is still open so he can justify it as the truth. 

Not that he really cares to lie to Kakeru. Not about anything inconsequential like that, anyway. 

“Geez, always with the studying. Live a little,” Kakeru says, but his voice is missing its usual dynamism and he sounds like he used to right before he set his head on the desk for an impromptu nap in the student council room. 

“Whatever.” Yuki rolls his eyes, but he can’t stop himself from picturing Kakeru like that - asleep, rumpled, peaceful, finally  _ finally _ still. 

"Would it be weird to say I miss you?" Kakeru asks, suddenly, and Yuki tries to picture his friend as he knows him: fidgeting with the frayed hem of a long-sleeve shirt artfully and disheveledly layered beneath a soft and worn metal band tee, eyes cast down at the fluorescent-lit street below his dorm room window. Maybe a beer bottle in his hand, glinting amber against his dark painted fingernails, providing a reasonable explanation for his call. 

The silence holds out, stretching into territory that would be awkward if not for all the time they seemed to spend sitting in silence. Kakeru's question still hangs unanswered, dangling on the airwaves between them like tennis shoes tossed up on an electric line. 

"Only if it's weird to say I miss you too," Yuki says at last, and he can practically hear Kakeru crack into a smile as the tension dissolves. 

"I knew you would," Kakeru says. "Must be tough, making your own way without your best friend."

"Something like that." For a moment, Yuki fears his sarcasm has gone soft and he's not sure Kakeru will pick up on it in the absence of a visible eye roll. 

But Kakeru just laughs, easy as breathing, like he always does. "How are things going? I hope your classes are easier than mine."

"Your classes aren't hard, you just don't study."

"I do too!" 

"Cramming for ten minutes before the exam doesn't count."

"Shut up," Kakeru says, drawing out each syllable in exasperation, but even through the phone speaker Yuki feels his fondness radiating, enveloping him like a warm kotatsu on a winter evening. 

Like it always does, the conversation meanders, Kakeru starting several stories and branching off on unrelated tangents, and it reminds Yuki of their third-year class trip when he tried to take a shortcut back to the inn and ended up leading Yuki and Kimi down several dead-end alleyways, only to find their way back when a frazzled teacher rounded a corner looking for them. 

He never does arrive at the point. But Yuki doesn’t really mind the journey. 

“Ah, shit,” Kakeru says at last. “My phone’s dying.” 

“Oh,” Yuki says, and he’s suddenly aware of his own phone, growing hot in his hand and making his cheek sweat. How long have they been talking, anyway?

“Call me sometime, okay?” Kakeru says, and that softness from before creeps back in, gentle at the edges of his salutation. “Night, Yun.”

“Goodnight, Kakeru.” The dial-tone cuts him off.

Yuki tells himself he’ll say it eventually. Maybe not over the phone; he’s not sure he trusts whatever wires and dishes and towers that get a phone call from one place to the next. He wants to be careful, calculated, wants his words to hit Kakeru’s ears unencumbered by the occasional static that plagues the lines. 

And if he does say it over the phone, Yuki wants to be the one to call. 

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written in FOREVER and I'm not sure if this is good but I had to get it out of my system and I also had to publish something because I started feeling ~bad about myself~ so. hope you're starved enough for content that you like it. also i kind of wanted to experiment with my writing style so if nothing else. good practice?
> 
> as always i'm on twitter and tumblr as @floraltohru


End file.
